Activism Quotes

There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your...

When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your ...

Lincoln on Grant: "He makes things get. Wherever he is, he makes things move.

If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.

The hour that was for them, for us, for all who had awakened one morning to see their fields covered...

The tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be ...

You never do any good until you get into some trouble.

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are distorted and destroyed,...

Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.

A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.

Although the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing.

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around ...

Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, ...

If you join the rat race — you're in the race of rats.

What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissec...

Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying ...

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials ...

What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. I...

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn...

As long as you're scared you're on the plantation.

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive ...

I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination ...

The world was in terrible shape, and I'm glad we stood up and said what we believed; but a lot of th...

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,Nothing is going to get better. It's not.

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be...

In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that ju...

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

[The ruling class] sees people in the working class as being almost animals. It sees itself as being...

We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. A...

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when w...

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the ...

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indif...

To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without p...

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than a...

We are the dead . Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust ...

Flo especially took me in hand. When I felt I had to prove the existence of discrimination with stat...

Or perhaps it's "activist," but on environmental and economic problems, without understanding that p...

New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question ari...

One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire helps ...

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may ...

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

To crank up a noisy bad stance out in a place like San Francisco and start yelling about “getting th...

Then all at once he´d hear his own voice enunciating clearly and firmly, feel its reverberance along...

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

It's not an effective protest if it's not pissing people off.

Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and ma...

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art ...

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things ...

When, thirty-five years ago, I tried to give a summary of the ideas and principles of that social ph...

It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It m...

You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no result...

Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who is for or against it.

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be gi...

I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the ba...

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a hu...

Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant...

The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific g...

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had...

The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve th...

She was not stunned, the way I was. In some strange way she was gleeful, as if this was what she had...

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it i...

The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and...

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the pe...

Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, ...

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my sit...

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve...

You do it for yourself. You don’t expect to change the world. You don’t even expect to influence you...

If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You...

The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, o...

Where there is power, there is resistance.

But I hate being a grandfather. It's indecent. In my mind's eye, I'm still twenty-five. Thirty-three...

At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we ha...

If I look at the mass I will never act.

Each of us lives with a sword over his head.There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who ...

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country.

Modern industrial civilisation has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The drivin...

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. Fo...

In the case of Tunisia, it was indeed this single act that sparked what had been long-standing activ...

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, eac...

(...) Taking the journalist's vow of impartiality and objectivity was not unlike joining an order of...

Wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; Right is where the movement is.

If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, y...

[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their ...

If, having endured much, we have at last asserted out "right to know," and if by knowing, we have co...

...she was something more- a force, a stable, familiar force like something out of my past which kep...

You speak of doing good to the world. Is the world such a small thing? And who are you, pray, to do ...

To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppresse...

Poets can't march in protest or do that sort of thing. I feel that's against the rules, and pointles...

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just dra...

It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting b...

If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the w...

Most good things have already been said far too many times and just need to be lived.